Word: verhoeven
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With feel-good comedies and soapy ship operas dominating commercial cinema, the visionaries are in retreat. Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) and Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall) have renounced the form. That leaves the creation of dank, luscious worlds within worlds to Alex Proyas. And he'll do fine. The Egyptian-born, Australian-raised director of The Crow has a chilling new fever dream called Dark City--a reminder of how sensuous a visual trip movie watching...
...however, that I hear the death-knell of liberal compassion or civilized political thought among the booms and bangs of Starship Troopers. In fact,Starship Troopers is sophisticated enough to recognize and comment on its own absurd, jingoistic hubris. We know this because director Paul Verhoeven punctuates his movie with the kinds of stentorian radio calls-to-arms familiar from World War II newsreels, and the same stylized "heroic" dialogue of '50s-era comic books and trading cards...
...just like those which the movie so savvily spoofs. The movie seems to critique belligerent nationalism and militarism from the inside out; and yet, the jazzy thrill of watching those bugs get picked off is great enough that the audience participates in that very same militarist spirit. Verhoeven torques our knee-jerk impressions of our own political sensibilities and forces us to resolve that conflict ourselves. All this from the man who made Showgirls...
...Verhoeven, a native of the Netherlands, where the incorporation of minorities into the military has been famously successful, speaks volumes through the film's self-conscious silence regarding the gender issue. Indeed, the political gesture must have been important to him, because for the film it was commercial suicide: the nudity earned the film an R rating, thus excluding the entire preteen market who buy action figures, love outer space, love giant killer bugs and pay to see their favorite movies multiple times...
...Even without a cartoon lion, Sony reached that nice, round number in record time (Aug. 31, beating Disney's best date--Nov. 23--by a stretch). And Sony expects to surpass the industry record of $1.22 billion, if it can scrape up the remainder on films such as Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi thriller Starship Troopers (a picture it's splitting with Disney), and As Good As It Gets, from Terms of Endearment director James L. Brooks...